….My first efforts weren’t great, but I had fun doing it. One night my wife found this clip of Bill O’Reilly melting down on Inside Edition, and then heard an audio remix that had been posted. It was 13-hours after the original clip had gone live on YouTube.
She called me over and we listened to it and she said, “Hey, you could cut that right?” And I thought, hell, I could. It’d be a straightforward timeline edit, just matching up the bits of video to the audio samples.
I cut it together in 3-hours, uploaded it, and within minutes comments were pouring in. I was stunned. Before that the only people who watched my stuff were friends and family of those involved in the projects. When it exploded online I took a step back and reevaluated my life. My fiction writing wasn’t going anywhere. I’d written two books that no one wanted to publish. My non-fiction writing wasn’t very satisfying.
I loved making videos and films, and after all the years working in the dark without much response I finally had an audience. When I realized how much writing went into good filmmaking and that I wouldn’t have to abandon my first love to do it, I decided to pursue it full time.
How did the ‘Guaranteed Sex’ film come about?
Guaranteed Sex is the product of a demented British mind that goes by the moniker Anthony Morcom. He scrawled this story on a paper napkin alone in the corner of a dingy bar in Tangiers. We struck up a conversation on the mating rituals of bonobo monkeys shortly thereafter. Before that he had been discussing the construction of a rocket ship with an empty bar stool.
I stuffed his fevered scrawlings in my back pocket, bought him half a bottle of whisky to put him around the bend, and continued on my way to the Algerian desert. Ten years later, I turned it into a short film. You can read more of his hilarious writing on his blog, Batteries Feel Included.
Have you tried doing the advice in the film?
Only in the way an engineer runs theoretical stress tests on models of a new suspension bridge before it’s built.
Do you have a signature camera angle?
Well, I don’t know if I’ve been doing it long enough to have developed a signature yet. I do love overhead shots though. Bird’s eye and perfectly straight up and down overhead shots. If the camera looks like it’s hanging from a chandelier and pointing straight at the ground, I love it. There are lots of way to play with blocking and symmetry when you’re looking straight down at people and only seeing the way bodies move through space.
What other Filmmakers do you admire?
My favorite filmmakers deal in stories where the stakes are life and death: Stanley Kubrick, P.T. Anderson, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Sidney Lumet, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Charlie Chaplin, Quentin Tarantino, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan.
How did you feel when you saw ‘The American Way’ in the ‘Life in a Day’ movie?
That was an incredible experience. There was a feeling of arrival. I finally felt justified in calling myself a filmmaker, and it hit me on a deep and emotional level that if I kept at it I could be making feature films at some point. It helped morale. I’d like the chance to shake Kevin Macdonald, Joe Walker and Ridley Scott’s hand one day and tell them they gave me a big boost in confidence when I was just getting started.
How do you get funding to make your films?
Right now it’s a combination of self-funding and projects that pay in equipment costs. For my shorts, usually I’m paying for it by doing small editing jobs or shooting event coverage. I put together a short documentary for a local community group, and that paid for my new camera and some lenses. I don’t have any significant financial backing for what I do. I’m writing a feature length script right now though, and will be trying to find investors when it’s done. Between my friends and I, we already have most of the equipment needed to shoot a feature – we just need a production budget. Since equipment is a huge cost, my first feature will be extremely affordable to make (relative to even most indie film budgets). I’m looking for $30,000. To put into perspective what I can do with $30,000, I made Guaranteed Sex for $150.
Are you looking to collaborate with other scriptwriters / editors etc?
Definitely. One of the things I love about filmmaking is that it’s a collaborative effort. You can’t do it alone. I’m naturally inclined to sit in a dark room by myself all day, so having to go interact in the real world to get my films made has been good for me.
Getting other perspectives on my work when it’s in the script and pre-production stage is invaluable as well. I’m always looking to work with other people.
More info visit: www.torreymeeks.com
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